Kevin Patterson: Consumption

I find it difficult to write about Consumption. To write about the book easily requires that the book left an impression – whether good or bad – and this one just fell a bit flat.

Of course, there are interesting aspects of life in the Canadian Arctic that come to light in the book.

Of course, there are stylistic elements that Patterson uses – like the symbolism of consumption in its various meanings – throughout the novel to create the feeling of loss that permeates the novel, in which ideas, history, tradition and people are consumed by the spread of “civilisation”.

The trouble is, that the book tried to focus on the lives of too many characters to really portray the specific community that is erased by the advance of modern life. The murder mystery that is added in the second half only adds to distract from the point of the novel.